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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

Discussion in 'Literature' started by AdmiralWesJanson, Sep 12, 2005.

  1. boomx2sjk

    boomx2sjk Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Nov 9, 2012
    That'd be BOSS.

    I really think (or hope) that Lucasfilm is going to attempt to tie the ST with the OT as much as possible. The most obvious way to do this is to bring back as many main characters as possible. Another way to do this, hopefully, is to bring back the iconic ships everyone (not just us SW addicts) can identify....Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters, X-Wings, etc.

    A good mix of well-known ships mixed in with newbies (Imperial-class star destroyers with some Interdictors, TIE Fighters with some TIE defenders, X-Wings with E-Wings) would be a good way to bridge the trilogies in terms of naval craft.
     
  2. Tzizvvt78

    Tzizvvt78 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2009
    In terms of the first film and its accompanying merchandise, sure.

    With the second film and a ship that was to the ISD what the ISD was to the Corellian corvette, we kinda lose that perspective, imho.

    Early EU inventions like the Invincible-class also don't follow a strict set of rules in regards to non-Executor warships ("Moving up hard astern the barge was a dreadnaught, one of the military's old Invincible Class capital ships-over two kilometers long, bristling with gun turrets, missile tubes, tractor-beam projectors, and deflector shields, armored like a protosteel mountain").

    The Helmsman appearing in Marvel SW also felt more at home in the early, jumbled EU than the later WEG-influenced lore, which imo, focused too much around the ISD with every other design being humbled by it. I think this is a problem when people get too accustomed to iconic vessels and start to equate iconic with "best at everything". [face_thinking]

    It actually happened to me when I saw the Assertor-class get canonized and being more massive and flashier than the Executor. :p I then rationalized it as having some specialization while the Executor is more of an all-rounder design. Good at lots of things, not the best at one.
     
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  3. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    It might have been the Thrawn trilogy describing the ISD as "mightiest ship in the Empire's fleet" (with the assumption that there weren't any more Executors serving at that point) that made me surprised to hear about intermediate-sized ships.

    As it currently stands, we don't know what the Assertor's capabilities are- only what the artist intended them to be. Maybe the next Essential Guide to Vessels will tell us?

    I like the notion of different shipyards being known for different traits- say, Corellian-built ships tending to be the fastest, Kuat-built ships tending to be built faster than others, and so forth.
     
  4. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    They've played such an inconsequential role, apart from Dark Empire, that they haven't really mattered much. Note that regardless how many Exes were actually made, only about six or so actually played any significance in the latter NR era. The ISDs were always the workhorse of the Empire and formed the bulk of their fleet, and by Thrawn's time I sincerely doubt that any Imperial forces other than the sequestered "Emperor Reborn" were making any ships larger than an ISD.
     
  5. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    I'm wondering how the Empire settled on them in the first place- maybe there were a selection of competing philosophies on the "ideal ship" during the Clone Wars, and the ISD won out because it was the all-rounder?

    The Venator (and I suspect, the Secutor) were light on weapons, heavy on launch bays.
    The Victory had heavy duty weapons, but fairly small launch bays
    The Tector had no launch bays at all
    The Imperator/Imperial fell in the middle.

    In The Star Wars Sourcebook it says there was something of an arms design race during that period, and that warship design advanced more then, than in the previous 200 years. Interestingly, the Procurator, the first "true battlecruiser" the Anaxes system put the label to, came out 200-odd years before the Clone Wars according to TEGTW.
     
  6. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

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    Oct 29, 2005
    I think that the ISD was settled on for political reasons - Starfall seemed to indicate that the VSD was the better overall design, but Lira's connections got the ISD made a priority. The Venator had the curse of being affiliated with the Republic in the public eye (according to the FUCG); the Tectors were a minor variant of the ISD that was never produced much - and the Movie Trilogy WEG guide indicated that the Empire was doing away with SDs without hangars.

    You raise a good point about the Procurator - there doesn't seem to be any call for KDY to have it developed with what's known about the times, was there something specific that led to their creation, or were they simply testing the waters in making larger ship designs? (Possibly they were the first designs to circumvent the Ruusan Reformations by having a limited hyperdrive)
     
  7. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2007
    The rare occasion where something was fixed for good reason.

    For me I want to see a good balance between small and large ships throughout the Era's, and not having everything fall under 1,600 m nearly 100% of the time over 25,000 years. If there weren't any ships between the ISD and the Death Star, then its like if the US Navy was made up of all Zodiac inflatables, but had one Nimitz-class carrier, except worse by a few orders of magnitude :)
     
  8. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    I'm wondering how much of the backstory of the ISD design gets changed, now that we know it was created before the end of the Clone Wars, rather than after:

    Star Wars Sourcebook p32:
    When Lira Wessex, daughter of the designer of the Victory-class Star Destroyer, proposed that the Empire produce the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, the angry debate between the Navy's military strategists, the Imperial Military Oversight Commission, the Corporate Sector, and the Senate Budgetary Commission (since disbanded) almost destroyed the Empire. Some believed the Imperial too expensive, some believed it too unwieldy, others quite simply thought it was an engineering impossibility. The Navy loved it, of course; and through a combination of bribes, political pressure, and a rash of mysteriously crushed tracheas, it slowly brought the others into line.

    Years later, when the first imperial-class ship lumbered out of drydock (only 50 million credits over budget) and assumed active duty, the Navy was proven correct in its belief.

    I'm guessing the intended implication is that Vader was the source of that mysterious rash ;)
     
  9. Tim Battershell

    Tim Battershell Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 3, 2012
    'Hot' War drives warship design, shipbuilding and replacement a lot faster than 'Cold' War or Peace and if ships aren't being used as much/lost as quickly then the bean counters tend to resist (because they are usually all-singing, all-dancing, multi-role designs and so more expensive) the introduction of new types unless and until the old are too worn out to be reconditioned/upgraded any more.

    Latest thinking, though is circa 45/50 ABY several logic-paths seem to end up there.
     
  10. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    I have a better idea. To show how the fortunes of the Rebellion have changed, open Episode VII with a Star Destroyer being chased by a Rebel Fleet and eventually destroyed. :cool:

    --Adm. Nick
     
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  11. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    I don't think it changes much - the ISDs are only test models in the Clone Wars. Much is made in Dark Lord about Vader getting the second-ever ISD. The budget fight to make it the official Imperial Navy mainstay probably still happens - anyways, late sources indicate that the VSDs and Venators still dominate in the first decade of the Empire.
    What I do wonder is what the other major shipyards had as competition (I realize that KDY probably had it already arranged behind the scenes, but I'm sure the Empire entertained a showpiece contract bidding of some kind), and what models were then eventually reused or modified in later years...
     
  12. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    As others have pointed out it actually did, CEC also builds ImpStars ;), though Han could easily have been talking about avoiding something else build by CEC.


    Üh you must have been avoiding the places when it kept being called an old design over and over and over again.

    Not really because it is is in no way meant to be able to match the ImpStar, hell given its design the ImpStar properly even out masses it.



    Which gets beaten into submission and no mention is made of how well it actually stood up in the fight, only that they somehow could not destroy it, so they just wrecked it beyond usefulness.

    What size rule? And the Baran has at no time been show to have more firepower than an ImpStar, it just happend to blow a pirate frigate out of the sky with one shoot.

    Actually no, as it often the case. :p
     
  13. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 10, 2005
    This....this is the best thing.
     
  14. Tzizvvt78

    Tzizvvt78 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2009
    I like this idea of the sequels showcasing what the EU did, that the Empire didn't evaporate into thin air right after Endor. Wouldn't be the first time Lucas changed his mind about something. :p

    First one to go.
    lol whut
    This from the civilization that had created much larger vessels for the past 10,000 years, up to and including the last war.
    Another change in canon. First batches finished in the weeks and months after the CW ended.
    This would be the only part still valid.
     
  15. The Man Who Sold the Moon

    The Man Who Sold the Moon Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Nov 19, 2012
    Maybe because they have to hurry making the movie they will just use EU designs plus movie ones to save time.
     
  16. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    It will be interesting to see what the status of the Empire will be in the Sequel Trilogy. At this point, I can see it going either way. On one hand, the Empire is an iconic part of the Star Wars experience, so from a purely visual standpoint it makes sense. However, on the other hand, Lucas has made very clear on several points in the past that any Sequel Trilogy would take place after the fall of the Empire and focus more on the rebuilding of the Republic and the Jedi Order.

    For me personally, I would be happy if Episode VII essentially showed the last throes of the old Empire, with episodes VIII - IX being about a new threat that challenges the new Jedi Order and the Republic.

    --Adm. Nick
     
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  17. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    It was designed after the ISD, and came into service after Yavin.

    The gap between the ISD and the Executors is large (an Executor is about 150x the volume of an ISD) - and I can see why you might find the idea of warship size jumping that much may be iffy, and prefer the retcon that there were intermediate-sized ships.

    But the same principle could be applied to the jump between the DS1 and DS2.

    The DS1 is implied (by Han's "too big to be a space station" comment) to be the biggest station the Empire has yet built (I'm leaving Centerpoint out since it wasn't built by the Empire or the Republic).

    Yet the DS2 would, supposedly, be over 200x its volume when complete.

    That's an even bigger jump than between ISD and Executor.
     
  18. Tim Battershell

    Tim Battershell Jedi Master star 5

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    Sep 3, 2012
    Big is beautiful in Palps' eyes - shame they often include fatal design flaws!
     
  19. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    The Empire still produced the Imperial class, anything before that where test models named Imperator as where the first ImpStars build by the Empire ;) Like StarWars.com already provide as fix ages ago, because unlike Saxton they don’t hate past sources and try to have stuff flow together :p


    Military Budget debates causing problems in a young government that forms itself after the end of a war!? How utterly unheard off. [face_whistling] Especially because one of the main complaints people kept leveling against the Emperor was excessive Military spending.


    Building very different ships, you don’t just churn out 25000 one mile warships with new technologies and a different building practice over night.

    Actually not, as the first ones should still be Imperator test models.



    Rest works fine as well. :)
     
  20. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    Let’s be honest here, the Executor design has been shown to be such an utterly failed design it’s almost ludicrous. It has literally never won a fight an ImpStar could not have won and its design history also points at no one ever seeing it as that important. They had been meandering about it for 20 years beforehand and had already begun to design a replacement model (one with a super laser at that) for it, before the first one was actually finished. If they Rebels had not blown up the Death Star that quickly I actually doubt they would ever have finished the Executor and just scrapped the whole thing in favour of building another Death Star or Eclipse ships.
     
  21. Tim Battershell

    Tim Battershell Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 3, 2012
    From Rebel Dream, they do seem to have their uses when it comes to orbital bombardment - which is what that book says they were designed for.
     
  22. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    Didn’t they book mention ImpStars in general in that regard? Plus the Eclipse is also a better bombardment ship, one blow from the Superlaser you have cracked the planet shield and most off the area bellow it. :p
     
  23. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2007
    What's so different about them and what new technologies are being developed? The SW Galaxy has been at a very high level of technology for quite some time, with not a whole lot changing. Building 25,000 one mile warships should be a tiny drop in the bucket for the Galactic ship building industry. Its just crazy to me to think that after so many millennia with all of this technology and having built other engineering wonders, that building ships greater than a mile in length in is somehow difficult or a great drain on resources.

    I like my sci-fi fantasy grounded in some reality and I don't think there will ever be a good explanation why any of these numbers just don't jive with any form of common sense. I don't want to see the EU destroyed by the new movies, but if it does I sure hope that they leave a lot of this stuff up to our imaginations.
     
  24. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    I thought superlasers didn't so much break shields as slice through them like they weren't there?
     
  25. Tim Battershell

    Tim Battershell Jedi Master star 5

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    Sep 3, 2012
    Just the Lucy as far as I can remember (although it may have been more general), but the task there was to sanitise a circular area around a friendly HQ and defenders - can't do that with a single beam!;)